The self-consciousness is back.
Everything I’m writing lately feels too personal to share. It started a few months ago when I began a draft of an essay on love. I was thinking about love in its purest form—whether unconditional love exists, whether love by its very nature is unconditional it’s just life which requires conditions, how I had a dream so simple and pure I woke up crying, how I’m a little bit in love with my friends but this concerns some people when you say it out loud so I don’t, how I wouldn’t characterize myself as a hopeless romantic but sometimes I watch Sleepless in Seattle when I’m alone and find myself wishing. But all of this is too embarrassing to admit to you, so it remains hidden in my drafts.
I wrote about a recent trip to Colorado too, but that also feels too sensitive to share. And then I did reveal something that I feel the urge to take back, but I’m trying not to do it. A kind of exposure therapy I suppose. So mostly I’ve been avoiding this space.
It feels too personal because I’m too close to the feelings still so I find it impossible to speak on them with impartiality. When I’m far enough away I can see things clearly, and what I’ve been writing lately is too current. I don’t know how I feel about any of it, so revealing it feels risky. Once I’ve sorted through something I don’t mind telling someone everything. I can reveal a deep, dark, brutal secret like it’s nothing. I can adopt a journalistic attitude, offer up a cool confession that catches people off guard, but until that point I want it all to remain safely within me. I’m a little closed off, but only because I need to know I can trust both of us.
Is that how things should go? Aren’t we supposed to feel, and then translate that feeling? Is there a way to do that without showing you my weakness? Therein lies the issue—that I feel weak when I’m vulnerable. I know where this comes from, and still I have trouble escaping the shame of it.
And so, yes, I find myself wanting to disappear. I’ve considered scrapping this entire newsletter and starting over in a few months with something else entirely. I’ve considered never posting another thing, since everything reveals something. I’ve considered setting off on a long trip I’ve been planning and telling no one.
Every evening at dusk when the sky colors look like this, I find myself wishing for something I cannot name. It makes me feel like time is suspended and I can still be whoever I want to be.
If I can just find my way back to the beginning.
I said to a friend I feel like I’m floating. I pressed both of my palms into the sofa, searching for something solid, “I need something to anchor me.”
The funny thing is, I’m doing okay. There’s just this lingering sense of purposelessness. I am unmoored. I have no idea why I’m doing anything that I’m doing. I’ve lost my footing.
In moments when I’m brand new to someone it feels possible for me to find it again. We are made up of everything that has happened to us, but when we meet someone new we don’t see everything that has happened to them, we only see them. I suspect they only see us too. The trouble, though, is that we cannot be brand new to ourselves.
This is the freedom I wish I could discover in the disappearing.
What I often fantasize will feel like freedom is only a stupid attempt at avoiding something fragile. Keeping myself hidden from others, no matter how safe it feels, will always eventually feel like loneliness to me. Because what I actually want isn’t to disappear. What I want is for someone to see me and not look away. What I want is to reveal myself and not regret it after. What I want is understanding.
So here I am, back to the beginning, wading my way through self-consciousness hoping that what waits for me on the other side will feel something like love.